Wikipedia:Policy dispute

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A policy dispute occurs when an agreement cannot be reached regarding a policy or guideline.

An accepted or operational policy or guideline can not be declared "in dispute" unilaterally, compare: Wikipedia:Don't disrupt Wikipedia to illustrate a point:

  • If you wish to change an existing procedure or guideline...
    • do set up a discussion page and try to establish consensus
    • don't push the existing rule to its limits in an attempt to prove it wrong, or nominate the existing rule for deletion

Which means declaring a policy or guideline to be in dispute can only be effectuated

  1. if it can be demonstrated that there has been a reasonable effort to establish consensus;
  2. if it can be established that there is a consensus that the best option forward is to declare the policy in dispute. This means broad consensus, for policy even very broad consensus.

All other attempts to declare a policy or guideline in dispute after it became accepted or operational will be considered vandalism or "highly disruptive egregious disruption".